Weaklings

Posted in Uncategorized by Flavor on May 9, 2018

Holland was who we thought he was. He got through 5, he gave up home runs. But he kept the team in the game about as well as any #5 can do.

As usual, you can look to the power production to see how the Phillies are doing this. They’ve hit 7 bombs we’ve hit 1 (a pinch hit bomb). You cannot compete in a bandbox by striking out a billion times and not hitting at least a few bombs.

Philly pitching has been good, that obviously has something to do with it. But even good pitching understands they’re going to surrender home runs in dumb ass venues like Citizen Banks Park.

Two young pitchers going at it today. Let’s see who sacks up and leaves the yard….

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Ugh the annoying Chris Paul on the way. Harden is also annoying but I can respect his shot, FTs and the way he has figured out how to draw contact to get to the line. Curry needs to improve on that; he led the league in FT pct and has begun to fall down a lot which usually gets refs attention.

guy Warriors have to handle would be Capela, athletic big that can rebound at both ends and score inside to complement the long range bombers gotta admit D’Antoni bugs me too..,your “system” works with all star players in the same way it failed miserably in NY.

Dude you’re left handed (like me) right? It’s really smooth and he does not miss FTs given the chance (missed FTs bug me from anyone). Yes the phantom foul calls he gets suck, but it helps his team win and Steph could get more of them.

if they hit the ball out of the yard instead of swinging and missing, that rate will go down. But honestly, i don’t care about their SO rate. It’s clear they’ve added guys who are more in line with today’s hitting approach and I’m behind that.

Agree. More disturbing to me is the collective OBP, which sucks for quite a few of the starters. Cutch has a shitty batting average, but he is always getting on base, so I’m down with that. For many of the others, it’s feast or famine, e.g., Gorkys, Craw, Longo, Action Jackson, Blanco . . . However, the worst is Pence and if they bring him back and give him a starting job again, I sense disaster.

I don’t have a problem with bandbox parks. Both teams play in the same yard, so if one is clobbering the ball and other doesn’t, well, the clobberer is going to win. I like home runs better than 405′ outs in Death Valley right center at ATT. Giants look like a .500 team, win a few in a row, lose a few in a row, look great one game, look like S the next. That’s way better than last year when they looked like S most of the time…

Watched Stros pen throw 4 shutout innings at the A’s last night and first 3 were hitless. Given 20 plus starts from Cueto and/or Bum in place of Holland would make difference in a .500 team and maybe make it easier on pen going forward.

But Snarkk is right, the same Giants that lit up ATL bandbox aren’t doing jack in Philly except whiffing. As they were talking on postgame about all the swing throughs Giants had last night, Kuip made a joke that Rueter had 20 something swing throughs in one season.

Saw highlight on the cheapo Stanton HR to RF. The pitch he swung at was far outside and he lifted it over the wall.

Yeah. at least the G’s are entertaining at times. And I have much more faith in Stratton than I do Holland. But I’m starting to come around to adjusting our ball park. Put the bullpens in death valley. Get rid of the garden. Hate to lose the whiskey bar tho.

As far as Harden goes, I’m fairly sick of his antics regarding getting to the line. He was bringing up the ball the other day, and he was barely above his own key when a defender reached in on him so he put up a shot form 55′ away. It went like 12′. He, and D’Antoni went ape-shit that they didn’t give him 3 shots. He should get t-ed up for being a dipshit.

And that has always bothered me they way Steph gets held and grabbed all the time when he doesn’t have the ball. And sure, he’s smaller so it’s easier, but if Harden got grabbed and shoved around like that, he’d be either throwing punches or whining incessantly. Which he does anyway.

Harden is a punk. A supremely talented punk, but still a punk. I hate that he’s constantly rewarded with foul shots for initiating contact. That’s bullshit basketball. When he doesn’t get the call he whines like the bitch that he is.The Warriors will have to finally set aside their propensity for sloppy ball and put together an entire series to even have a chance. Even last night, they just shut down and let the Pels all the way back into the game at the end. Do that against Houston and they’ll get killed.

The Giants haven’t been able to beat the Phillies for several years now. This pathetic two game effort has not changed that. Houston is going all the way this year. I just don’t see the W’s having the depth or defensive capability to stop them. I hope they prove me wrong, but that arena i Houston is going to be coming apart at the seams on Monday and the W’s are horribly prone to slow starts. They could get buried.

Capela will be the difference maker for sure. I think this is the toughest test these Warriors will have ever had and that includes any Finals against Bron Bron. As far as the Toyota Center, it should be raucous for sure. That being said, their entire lower level seats from baseline to baseline are club level seats and those hoity toity oil and gas execs usually spend more time at the bar then in their seats. From what I am hearing the new Warriors arena in SF is going to be the same way.

Stratton needs to come up with a big start today. The Giants can ill afford to lost the first three of this series. The injury bug is killing them and there’s too many holes in this lineup to just leave wins on the field. They wanted to go old, and now it’s catching up to them. So far they’ve let two career nobody’s dominate them.

I like Blanco as an off-the-bench piece and spot starter, but he an Jackson just kill the team with their vacuous at bats. McCutchen hasn’t hit a homer in about a month and Posey just doesn’t drive the ball anymore. Good average, little production. Holland needs to leave. I’ve gone from defending him to barely being able to watch him pitch. It’s amazing how two games can almost entirely remove the luster from a three game road sweep.

I think it’ll actually help that the Warriors are starting this on the road. All they need to do is take one of two and they’ll be fine. You don’t thin the Warriors have the firepower? The starters should be fine. It’s Livingston who needs to get more consistent. His play has been spotty but the bench needs to keep the pressure on when they are out there.

The Warriors are their own worst enemy. If they can limit the turnovers ,they’l be fine. Since Hou doesn’t pass much, they don’t turn the ball over much. If we get sloppy we lose. 10-12 turnovers is acceptable. 18 they lose.

And don’t forget, Harden has the propensity to disappear in big games.

Very true about Harden in big games, and that’s one of the reasons they went out and got CP3. If a game is on the line, I would much rather see Paul, or even an Eric Gordon with the ball than Harden. I don’t think there are any Rockets fans that would disagree.

Nothing about this series says “they’ll be fine” to me, even winning one of the first two games. I do agree that starting on the road doesn’t have to be a bad thing because too often they come out with that famous lackadaisical style of play in home games. They need to start out with some fire, especially on the defensive end. And absolutely yes about controlling the TO’s, the team’s greatest bugaboo.

It should be a hotly contested series. Incredibly, the Cavs appear poised to return to the Finals, something inconceivable even a month ago.

They could kill two very large birds with one stone by redoing the dimensions. If it’s feasible, they could rid of the confounded mounds on the field of play while simultaneously making the park more hitter friendly.

The park is nearing 20 years old. A couple other cities (Atlanta) and soon to be (Texas) will have had new ballparks built within 20-25 years of their inception. I think Baer could easily sell the value of a stadium refresh to its finicky fan base. . I think you move in the fences and use the newfound space to build bullpens, and you could even had field level seating adjacent to the bullpens and directly behind the fence similar to what they just did in Houston when they removed the hill. Those seats are only sold to corporate groups and I can only imagine how much they cost. Included in the ticket price is the ability to shag batting practice balls, which I think is pretty cool.

I didn’t know Houston had removed that hill, which had to be one of the dumbest ballpark design features in recent memory. If the Giants could make it work without completely buggering up the aesthetics of the park, you’d think it’d be a no-brainer. In other words, it’ll probably never happen. Hard to believe AT&T is closing in on 20 years already.

A place like Safeco Field is a perfect example of why every new stadium should have the pens built away from the field of play. They’re aesthetically pleasing and fans love to stand along the rails right on the main concourse in left field and look down into to the pens to watch the pitchers warm up. Since they’re set below concourse level, you can watch the game at the same time. It’s a great feature and very popular.

The Giants org will counter with “3 championships in 19 years, why change anything?”
I’m not gung-ho on changing the ballpark, but I’ve moved from “no” to ambivalence.
Because we have the 3 championships, the Giants could be open to trying some different things. Baer is the biggest hurdle. He treats everything Giants as sacrosanct.

Agree. Giants have banked 3 championships and a WS appearance, along with numerous playoffs due in part to the Phone Park’s dimensions. In the past, pitching, defense and timely (conga line?) hitting has been the recipe. Talk to any of our pitchers (especially Smarg, Strickland and Bum) and they’ll say keep it like this.

The other thing (which Wilco mentioned) is the aesthetics. Perhaps only PNC Park is more beautiful than ours. Dollars to donuts, any modification turns into a monstrosity like the Coliseum or worse. Besides, I have a sneaky suspicion that the ball park engineers they would hire, moonlight as the Giants medical staff.

The Giants have a shit ton of room where the garden whiskey bar area is. They can put 2 bullpens side by side without removing a seat. And they could simply add seats in the Bermuda triangle area of the OF and be done with it.

I posted my high-tech diagram a while ago. that showed the easy way to cut down the triangle and still make it around 410 form the plate. Hard? Sure, but that wouldn’t be any more 420′ outs.

The garden bar won’t be removed. It’s viewed as a roaring success. It’s like all ballparks want more of these hang-out spots where people don’t really watch the game. Not my thing, but they’re not marketing it to someone like me. It’s for the so-called “casual fan” which all teams pursue in earnest.

The bullpens are sort of strange to me. If I remember correctly there’s already a full batting cage in the area under/behind the dugout. They could probably just move the bullpens there somehow. Fans could watch as relievers warm up and Baer could monetize it with micro concession stands or something.

My biggest pet peeve regarding the Giants is listening to fans irrational pet peeves. I’m loving this season so far, because the top three annoying complaints have for the most been quieted.
In reverse order of stupidity:
The Giants have weak ass fourth outfielders!
No, actually giving equal weight to defense and hitting, Gorkys was their best outfielder last year. Yes, that’s a big problem in and of itself. Torres and Blanco were significant contributors to three WS titles.
Belt sucks Dodger dick!
No, looking at called third strikes is infuriating, but Belt has led the team in OPS most years he’s been with the team and he’s a Gold Glove caliber first baseman. If Longoria, Crawford, Panik, and Belt ever manage to stay in the lineup together, it’s the best defensive infield in history, play for a season without long slumps, it’s the best ever period.
They need to bring in the right/centerfield fence!
This is the stupidest one of all. Pac Bell Park is an architectural masterpiece. I’d sooner square off the top floors of the Transamerica Building or paint the Golden Gate Bridge Dodger blue than alter it. Changing the name is barely acceptable. The aesthetics? A sacrilege. Also, unless you’re installing a Bill Veeck fence which can moved back and forth between innings, it would hurt the Giants chances of winning at home AND the road.
If outfielders can make it there, they’ll make it anywhere. The ones that can’t don’t sign as free agents. Let the Phillies overpay them.

Putting pitchers mounds in the field of play precludes it from being an “architectural masterpiece.” They’re festering whiteheads on an otherwise beautiful park. A masterpiece would’ve included a way to have bullpens OFF the baseball field.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen proof that the engineers and architects overlooked the bullpens and then had no choice but to put them down the lines. (The story about the UC Davis engineers convincing the Giants to turn the ballpark to open toward the Bay rather than toward the City skyline, to protect most seats from the wind, is definitely true.) There’s always been enough space behind the CF wall for bullpens. Baer’s design team must’ve decided that pens on the field were cool.

oh, yeah. There’s a ton pf space under the bleacher seats and behind the whole garden/whiskey bar area. The best thing would be to butt up the bullpens side by side to the CF wall and have them go straight back under the scoreboard. The fans could see the guys warming up ftom the bleacher seats.

I agree. I think the foundations for the scoreboard supports are down there, but there’s a good amount of room between them. I haven’t been to the “cafe” they put up near the scoreboard. That might be a good place for a real bar, good pre-game loitering for people without club level tickets. The potted plants won’t be missed.

On the ballpark deal, I think its all nice and good if the building is attractive and has great views, but the main thing I want from a ballpark is for it to play reasonably fair. A ball that is not hit that well shouldn’t be a home run— and a ball that is crushed should be. ATT fails the latter part of that test big time.
And the bullpen mounds are a total safety issue as well as being bush league. A guy shouldn’t have to warm up with fans sitting 4 feel away from him.
Maybe if we would have lost 10 in a row after Mac went out, people would give a crap that we lost him because of those bullshit bullpens.

iirc, Candlestick had some weird hutches down the lines for relief pitchers to sit in, but the warm up pens were open, in foul ground. If that memory’s right, maybe the new ballpark design was some sort of ill-considered homage.

I would be cool with some changes along the lines of what Charlie presented in the graphic above. As much as I love sitting along the 3rd baseline and watching the guys in the bullpen warm-up, I would be down with moving the bullpens off the field, even if that means shit-canning “the garden” or whatever the fuck it’s called in centerfield.

I would not want to see significant changes to the fences/park dimensions. Yeah, add seats to the “triangle” in triples alley, but no way I want the fences moved in all the way around. I like the “pitchers’ park” aspect of our yard.

Question – Kingery played 10 seasons, which is the magic number for maximum pension benefits . . . However, a couple of those seasons, he only played a few games, e.g., the Oakland season. So, my question is how does that work, insofar as being credited for retirement purposes? Does he get a full pension?

Yeah I remember Mike Kingery with the Giants, basically a utility guy playing the OF, lefty, not much pop, but decent line drive hitter at times.
Early 90’s I believe maybe a couple years with the G’ boys think he was a Royal starting out..

I got in the car just as Johnson finished melting down and Bochy brought in Law. I immediately thought “well, Law in is no bueno, even in a blowout. Sure enough, first pitch wild pitch for a run, then more ineptitude followed. Law has been manhandled at AAA, I don’t see how they expect him to actually get hitters out up here. Dude is perm AAA fodder or DFA time. Way past seen enough …

holeyjeezusfuckingchristallmighty what bullshit from the Giants. What was the play of the game, Posey throwing out a base stealer?
As to Kingery, I was preoccupied when he was a Giant, but I swear I remember him after the strike as the least interesting player on the Rockies. I happened to attend a few games vs. the Rockies during that era.
On the pension deal, I think mlb calculates benefits incrementally, based on number of days on the 25. One day on the roster in a season does not equal a “season,” I think.

Service time is exactly what it sounds like; the number of years and days of major league service a player has in their career. Typically, it’s written as Year.Days, so we would express a player with four years and one hundred and fifteen days of service time as 4.115. You earn a day of service time for every day you are on the 25-man roster or the major league disabled list during the regular season. If you’re called up on June 22 and you’re sent down after June 28, you’ve earned seven days of MLB service. Your team doesn’t have to play a game for you to accrue a service day.

There are usually about 183 days in an MLB season, but a player can only earn a maximum of 172 days per year. That means if you’re on the roster for 178 days, you earn 172 days. If you’re on the roster for 183 days, you also earn 172 days. Not surprisingly, 172 days of service is equal to one year of service.

More bitchin if they were all behind the plate at the same time.Have the inside corner strike covered, down the middle, and outside corner.
The pitcher decides which catcher he ‘sthrowing too 1-2-are 3 with his own fingers and if he shakes all 3 off he just gives them the finger…

What do we know about the Giants principal owner, Charles Johnson?
Dude is worth north of $6 billion.
Does he give an S whether the Giants win or lose? Whether they have a plan, a shot at another pennant in the next decade? I have no idea. I wouldn’t know him if I ran over him with my cart at Trader Joe’s (like he’d be there).
He leaves ops to Baer, sure. But, the main owner of the team we follow — we don’t have a clue what this guy is about, or whether he gives a damn whether the team wins 2-0 or gets clobbered in Philly 11-3. Or, that Law is a hopeless gas can when Bochy rolls him in there. Apparently he does give an S about the lux tax. But, with $6 billion in his wallet, why does he care?
At least with Fisher — the A’s fans know he doesn’t give an S…

aw, he’s not even in the top 200 richest men in the USA. And he’s frugal. He uses the wall behind homeplate to advertise his Franklin Templeton (or whatever it is) investment firm only during game broadcasts. I’ll bet his terms with the team for those transitory ads are a lot better than Nuveen’s or BofA’s or Visa’s for their permanent signs.

Law will always be remembered as the pitcher Bochy brought in to start that fateful 9th inning of Game 4 vs. the Cubs. He was the start of the parade of failure that inning. Law, Romo, Lopez, Strickland, and whoever else was brought in. They all failed. Every single one of them. Lopez walked Rizzo, the only batter he faced, and that was the last batter he faced in his career.

Funny, top 9 last night A’s brought in Casilla down 4-2 and he was screwy as ever. He gave up a hit, walked 2 and nearly beaned one. There were at least 2 mound conferences, he went full count on most hitters but ultimately pitched out of it. He’s slower to the plate than Gearrin. Fosse and the other Kuip were not happy as the half inning took forever.

So my mom doesn’t get to watch the Giants game tomorrow because it’s only on Facebook. She is an incredibly loyal Giants fan, and this is how MLB rewards her, because they don’t care much about her age demographic. She really looks forward to each game on TV, as a lot of elderly Giants do, who can’t see the game tomorrow because they aren’t online.

They came to Philadelphia and have shown themselves to be a complete pile of garbage.
Enjoy tomorrow’s F-book disgrace from your desks while you pretend to work.
I’ll be at Belmont self-destructing with my fellow unemployed…

If (or when) the Giants fall far off the Wild Card map, I could see trading Cutch and just go all young with the outfield: Slater, Duggar, Shaw, and Williamson. Send Blanco, Gorkys, and Pence on their way.

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Timmy is 34 now. And I want to say “only 34”. And he’s been pretty much done for awhile. I can’t really even imagine how that would feel, to be *done* before the age of 35. Because, you know, my career has just been one long upward trajectory with no end in sight…